Opinions for this mono track

Recording in mono is not a problem, but this song was not recorded well. Everything sounds distant, and is full of room reflections, like it was recorded in a cement garage. There is a loud buzz at the beginning of the recording. The vocalist sounds like he's 25 feet from the mic. Perhaps you could share how you recorded everything, and then you could get some useful tips on how to make it better. From a mix standpoint, mono tracks are fine, but you need to do some panning to get the guitars away from the vocals, etc.. Post your recording techniques, mics, placement, room, etc. and you might get some useful feedback.
 
Holy reverb batman. Man you need to go back to square one on this one. Is all that reverb a stylistic choice, or can you not hear that you sound like you're in a metal storage tank? What are you monitoring with? The timing and sounds are all over the map. I really don't even know where to begin to tell you how to fix it besides recommending you simply start all over with basic recording techniques like practice your performances and read up on panning and mic techniques. I'm not trying to be harsh. If you can't start with a good performance and good sounds, the rest is gonna be very difficult to deal with. Maybe post a youtube vid of an example of something you want to sound like and we can go from there.

Also, this song is not in your range. Your vocals are all over the place.
 
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Hey thanks for the comments!
Yeah about the reverb thing. You probably wouldn't be deemed crazy if you were to say I was a tad bit overzealous when it came to the garageband reverb:eek:. I think I just got carried away and dialed it in a bit too much.
And yeah as far as the timing goes it was pretty loose as well. When I rerecord it all I'll definitely keep that in mind as a top priority. I wasn't even really thinking about it before which shows.
Here's the vocal sound I sort of had in mind, kind of a typical 80s power ballad type deal. A big part mix of this was just kind of letting the chips fall.
‪Ozzy Osbourne - Mama, I'm Coming Home (Studio Version)‬‏ - YouTube
That vocal sounds pretty awesome right?

For now though I'm going to leave it as is and work on some other original songs. As flawed as it is, I actually really enjoy it, I've been listening to it every day this week. I seem to base most of my songs off of my experiences just going out to bars and stuff. I even had a couple people ask me how they could buy the song to download, but I definitely don't think its a high enough mix quality yet.
 
Lol. You wanna sound like an Ozzy recording? Okay then. Listen to that recording, then listen to yours. For one, on the Ozzy track, everything is clean and clear in it's own space. They probably started with a defined song structure, and they most certainly started with people that can play, sounds that are good, professional equipment, and then a mixing engineer or producer panned and EQ'd and compressed and reverbed things accordingly to make it all work together. So what can you do to mimic that? Listen critically to your mix and compare it to Ozzy's. What's different? If you can't identify the glaring differences, then you won't be able to improve. Train yourself and your ears to hear things how they are and not how you imagine it to be in your head.

And never let loving support from family and friends give you a false sense of security. They mean well, but they don't know anything. They're probably not gonna tell you, "man this shit sucks!" :D
 
Hey thanks for the comments!
Yeah about the reverb thing. You probably wouldn't be deemed crazy if you were to say I was a tad bit overzealous when it came to the garageband reverb. I think I just got carried away and dialed it in a bit too much.

The vocalist sounds like he's 25 feet from the mic. Perhaps you could share how you recorded everything, and then you could get some useful tips on how to make it better. From a mix standpoint, mono tracks are fine, but you need to do some panning to get the guitars away from the vocals, etc.. Post your recording techniques, mics, placement, room, etc. and you might get some useful feedback.

And never let loving support from family and friends give you a false sense of security. They mean well, but they don't know anything. They're probably not gonna tell you, "man this shit sucks!"
 
The title definitely should be 'Tank (it's dark in here!)' at this stage. Start with everything clean and create a sound space that is believable in a live performance. THEN get artistic and spread things out. Get your performance just right on each track (so that bad parts don't bug you every time you play it back). You have got ideas, now use the canvas before you and create a picture.
 
Greg_L said:
And never let loving support from family and friends give you a false sense of security. They mean well, but they don't know anything. They're probably not gonna tell you, "man this shit sucks!" :D
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If you say that then you've clearly never met my family:D. Actually I agree with you here, and I've even gone so far as to not give any of my recordings to family or friends, because I know their reaction wouldn't be genuine whatever the case. All the reactions I've gotten from this have been from fans who've never met or seen me before. That was most from live playing though. The main things to improve here seem to be timing and too much reverb. Take it easy on me, I'm just learning. lol.
 
Absolutepower said:
If you say that then you've clearly never met my family:D. Actually I agree with you here, and I've even gone so far as to not give any of my recordings to family or friends, because I know their reaction wouldn't be genuine whatever the case. All the reactions I've gotten from this have been from fans who've never met or seen me before. That was most from live playing though. The main things to improve here seem to be timing and too much reverb. Take it easy on me, I'm just learning. lol.
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I still think you would benefit from posting how you are recording everything. Not sure it's all reverb creating the problems, although having it slathered on so heavily certainly makes constructive criticism difficult.
 
guitar zero said:
I still think you would benefit from posting how you are recording everything. Not sure it's all reverb creating the problems, although having it slathered on so heavily certainly makes constructive criticism difficult.
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Sure. It was recorded in my friends basement. Its a medium sized basement with low cieling. I actually really like it. I left my gear there for future recording so I don't remember what monitors. Unfortuately I don't have them here for further mixing so I don't have that advantage, they're M-audio and cost about $200. Mic was an Oktava Mk219 through m-audio fastrack interface. Guitars were DI Yamaha Pacifica. Also I just put up a new version of the track where I took off literally 75% of the reverb on the vox. I also was able to make the timing better but only in one part. It will still have to be recorded again.
Thanks.
Creatures LessVerb by alcoyot on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free
 
I like the song itself, but the vocals are way to far up in front on that second mix - to the extent it sounds like an acapella song with a record on in the background. I think it's a tune that's worth persevering with, but as I can only really hear the singing, it's hard to judge the rest of the mix.
 
It reminds me a little of Ian Stuart's Patriotic Ballads LOL. A lot of it sounds like panning problems to me, but I could be wrong because I'm not an expert. The drums are too low. The guitars take up too much of the low end. I can hear the tone of the guitar clearly and more in front than the vocals.

If you have any control over the mix I would do a search on google for "mixing and panning" and just read everything you possibly can about mixing techniques. If not and you just want to see what people think about your song, it needs a lot work. Not totally that bad, but needs a lot of work.
 
Removing the reverb is a vast improvement. The basement room is probably responsible for the vocals still sounding so "roomy". If I had to guess, I'd say there is no acoustic treatment in this basement. That would help a great deal. Since it's your friends basement, and you can't modify a friends basement, even surrounding the vocalist and mic with some absorptive gobos would help get rid of all the room reflections you hear on the vocals. The Oktava mic is a good LDC, and you should be able to get good recordings from it. How far from the mic was the vocalist?

Then there's the panning and mixing issues to deal with. Lot's of room for improvement, but lot's of people here willing to help if you stick with it and are willing to learn.
 
New track is better...still not good. First, is that chorusy guitar in tune? The lead guitar isn't playing the same rhythm as the rest. Still WAY too much reverb on vocals. Take off another 75%.

Guitars sound distant. Try close micing the cabs...right on the speaker cone...start there and see how it sounds. DI guitars usually sound like DI guitars. Use a mic on them.

Drums are boring and don't do anything.

Is there a bass? Is there a kick drum? Is there a snare? Without a good solid foundation with those three, nothing else will sound good.

It sounds like a bad practice with a mic placed in the middle of the room. Work on the song and arrangement and playing first. Without that no recording will make it sound good.
 
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